At the end of the vice-presidential debate, Gov. Tim Walz asked Sen. J.D. Vance a pointed question: Is Donald Trump Lose the 2020 elections? Vance’s response: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their minds in the wake of the 2020 covid situation?
There is an obvious correct answer — that the 2020 presidential election was actually valid — and Vance declined to offer it. It was, as Walz immediately points out, “a damning non-answer,” showing viewers who JD Vance is and what he stands for.
In the end, every issue discussed earlier that night came second to the fundamental question of whether America’s democratic institutions are worth enduring. On this question, Vance is truly radical, and his exposure was the only truly important moment of the night.
Many Republicans have accepted Trump’s lies about the last election. Some did so reluctantly, but Vance was enthusiastic. He has, among other things, Fundraiser for the January 6 rioters And said he would Illegally threw the 2020 election results to Congress If only he had been in Mike Pence’s position at that time.
But what is most distinctive about Vance is his association of 2020 conspiracy theories with other anti-democratic positions and ideologies.
in A 2021 podcast interviewVance said Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the Supreme Court intervenes, Vance suggested that Trump simply ignore the ruling and dare the court to stop him. In the interview, he pointedly cites Curtis Irwin — a Silicon Valley blogger who advocates overthrowing democracy and replacing it with a form of monarchy — as an influence on his views in this area.
None of this should come as a surprise. Anti-Democratic radicalism has become central to Vance’s political identity since he began his Senate run in Ohio, widely discussed since becoming Trump’s vice president earlier this year.
And yet, it wasn’t central to tonight’s vice presidential debate. Moderators kept it until the very last minute of the event, only coming in later The debate was essentially over. Despite democracy being at the core of the difference between the two candidates on the stage – indeed, the core ideological difference between the two parties today – it was considered an afterthought.
By doing so, the moderators create an illusion of normalcy: allowing the two candidates to discuss issues like housing and the deficit in a largely ideological-politician manner, when they actually disagree on an existential question about the nature of American government.
It’s also worth reflecting on Vance’s attempt at deviance — Harris’s misleading line about trying to “censor Americans from speaking their minds” during the Covid-19 pandemic — because I think it’s essential to understanding the ideological scaffolding of anti-democratic politics on the right. today
There are multiple theories on the right about how the Biden administration colluded with Big Tech to censor Americans, and it wasn’t exactly clear which one Vance was referring to in particular. For present purposes, the details of the issue are less important than the normative role they play.
For Vance and others like him, it’s imperative in 2020 to do more than insist that Trump was right — to go the extra mile and say that Democrats are the real threat to American democracy today. This argument, the claim that he and Trump are the true defenders of democracy, serves as a justification for taking aggressive steps to seize power.
When Vance proposed to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in 2021, he wasn’t selling it as a bare-bones power grab. Rather, he positions it as a kind of counterattack: a necessary response to the left’s alleged stranglehold on the “deep state” in Washington. Trump’s campaign rallying cry to overturn the 2020 election was not that democracy was illegitimate, but that Trump had been robbed of his legitimate victory by Democratic fraud. Stop stealing!
The “Democrats are bad” argument does more than legitimize a power grab. It’s a powerful disciplinary tool to sway Republicans, the kind not on board with the rough-and-tumble politics of Trump or Vance. If they waver or blanch, the response is that Democrats more dangerous Helps bring them back onside — producing The incident is known as the anti-Trump protest.
In just a moment, briefly, the veneer of normality that had been carefully constructed over the last 90 minutes was punctured. Vance not only exposed the true core of his candidacy, but also laid out some of the key ideological scaffolding behind the Republican Party’s transformation into anti-Democratic territory.
What makes Tucker tick?
One question I’ve been asked about JD Vance is “Does he really believe what he says?” It’s an intriguing question, but in some ways an irrelevant one: what matters about a politician is less what they secretly “truly believe” than what they say publicly.
The same goes for a man said to be Vance’s stature: Tucker Carlson. A longtime Washington journalist turned comical Trump-aligned demagogue, discussing “what happened to the money” is one of the capital city’s most popular guessing games — if it’s ultimately pointless and unanswerable.
Yet a recent piece by journalist John McCormack on the subject — titled “What happened to Tucker Carlson?“- still worth your time. Ultimately concluding that its title question is impossible to answer, McCormack manages to shed a lot of light on who Tucker was and the thorough nature of his political transformation. It’s well worth reading.
A few more links:
- A conservative activist Lost his job for gay porn.
- Philosophy is studied good for you.
- An illustration about Dockworkers strike.
- D A very simple case against Trump’s very simple tariffs.
